


Hearth and Home

by Jayne L (JayneL)



Category: Profit
Genre: Gen
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2006-02-24
Updated: 2006-02-24
Packaged: 2017-10-04 15:00:59
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,002
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/31517
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/JayneL/pseuds/Jayne%20L
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Jim goes house hunting.</p>
            </blockquote>





	Hearth and Home

The house is about fifty years old, an unremarkable single-level in cheap brick and plastic siding. After a cursory tour--these are the rooms, note this charming feature--the realtor gives Jim a brittle smile and excuses herself, saying that he should take some time to explore what the house has to offer on his own. He sees the tightness around her eyes and mouth, the nervous patter of her fingers on the folder she carries, and nods; she hurries to the door with small, quick steps, and lets the screen bang shut behind her.

Jim stands still for a minute, waiting for the currents of her fear to settle. He isn't bothered by her abrupt exit; he knows it has nothing to do with him. It's the ghosts that frighten her.

Jim pays only enough attention to the supernatural to know that he can write it off until the day it has some kind of direct impact on his life. He fully expects that day never to come. He doesn't believe the house is haunted, not the way he suspects the realtor does; he knows, though, that it's full of the ghosts of its former occupants, and that they can unsettle anyone--like the realtor--who isn't prepared for them.

Jim, naturally, has come prepared. The ghosts are why he's here at all--suffering the sticky heat of summer in one of Chicago's poorer neighbourhoods, viewing a house he has no intention of buying--and as he begins a slow pace through the empty, sweltering rooms, he looks with sharp eyes for evidence of their existence.

He doesn't have to look very hard. He finds something in almost every room: in the kitchen, harsh chemical stains splashed in three cupboards, none of them under the sink; in the front bedroom, gouges in the floorboards describing the arc of the door being forced open despite something heavy pushed against it; in the smaller bedroom, an inexplicable lock on the outside of the closet door, and scratch marks under flaking layers of paint on the inside.

The basement is less forthcoming. It's unfinished: bare wooden steps lead down into a cool cement box, dingy grey walls and floor marred in places with the scuffs and bumps of unskilled levelling. At a casual glance, it's just like every other unfinished basement in every other older house, disconcerting only in the generic way of damp darkness and cobwebs--but Jim knows what to look for, and doesn't stop at a casual glance. Worn-looking beams cross the expanse of the ceiling; Jim has to search for the exposed pipes, and finds them under the stairs. Beneath them is the only electrical outlet serving the entire space, and Jim wonders how far away any plugged-in appliance--a refrigerator, for example--could possibly have been.

The realtor hadn't taken him to the basement; she'd simply opened the door and gestured into the dark to confirm its existence. Jim's glad to be seeing it for the first time on his own. Compared to the upstairs rooms, the evidence of its past isn't obvious; nevertheless, Jim considers its ghosts the centrepiece of the modest little house. Standing in the light of one naked overhead bulb, he lets his mind's eye watch them in glorious living colour.

Afterwards, he climbs the stairs, shuts the door, and goes to join the realtor where she's been waiting, perched in a cheap patio chair in front of the garage. She drops her cigarette when she sees him, stamps on it a little guiltily with the pointed toe of her shoe, and tries not to look like she's surprised to see him smiling. "Well, what do you think?"

He thinks about the day last week when Chas ordered him to Chicago to oversee the final signing of the ChrysCorp merger: Jim had booked his flight on the company jet, cleared his schedule for the next week with Gail, and left a message for Bobbi to discourage the development of any crises while he was out of town. And after work had been taken care of, he'd gone to the mental ward.

He'd had to leave certain personal effects at the nurses' desk; Judith Meltzer was on suicide watch again, and while her doctor thought a visitor would be beneficial, he didn't want to take any chances. Jim had smiled when she was brought into the visiting room, had spoken softly as he made polite conversation about the weather, current events, and her family. Unfortunately, by the time he collected his necktie and belt from the nurses, Judith was not only sedated, but restrained.

Then he thinks about seeing Joanne at work next week. "Chas sent me to Chicago for a few days," he'll say. "Since I was in town, I went to see your old house. Where you grew up."

She'll tense even more than she usually does in his presence. "It's just a place," she'll say--maybe not those exact words, but something like them, certainly. But whatever she'll say to pretend it doesn't matter will be betrayed by the unconscious movement of her hand to her throat, as if to guard against something threatening her breath.

The realtor watches him expectantly, her face flushed in the bright afternoon sun. Jim can see she's desperate to sell the house; it's been on the market almost six months, and he can only imagine how many times she's had to show it. His smile doesn't change. "I'll get back to you," he says.

He gets back to the house first, in the dark stillness of midnight. He breaks the lock on the back door as messily as possible: the neighbourhood's not Cabrini Green, but then it's not Gold Coast, either, and the property has been unoccupied--officially--for months. Jim isn't a prideful person, but he'll gladly go to great lengths to make things look _right_.

He's boarding the El four blocks away when he hears the fire trucks, screaming their way through the night.

End.


End file.
